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Nutrient Flow Scenarios for Sustainable Smallholder Farming Systems in Southwestern Burkina Faso

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Title Nutrient Flow Scenarios for Sustainable Smallholder Farming Systems in Southwestern Burkina Faso
 
Creator Meylan, Grégoire
 
Contributor Thiombiano, Boundia Alexandre
Le, Quang Bao
 
Subject agricultural livelihood systems
 
Description The report presents a study on nutrient flows of agricultural livelihood systems dominated by
smallholder farms in South-western Burkina Faso. The material flow analysis of nitrogen, phosphorus,
and potassium provides a detailed picture of current nutrient flows within, in to, and out
of smallholder farms. Such a picture allows quantifying material potentials for sustainable intensification,
that is, increasing the ratio of crop yield to mineral fertilizer inputs. Finally, in the pursuit
of indicators for sustainable intensification, we propose combining indicators derived from
material flow analysis with indicators of socio-economic nature to move from material potential
assessments to sustainability assessments. The combination is informed by the criticality concept,
a concept which denotes how important a specific material resource is to an anthropogenic
system. Based on an existing criticality determination methodology for metals, we sketch the criticality
indicator set for the case of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and smallholder farms.
Further research should include increasing temporal boundaries to capture cycles longer than a
year, the applied temporal boundary in this study. A multi-scale study including villages and landscapes
could provide additional insights on the role of water bodies or future .industrial activities
in nutrient cycling. In turn, the multi-scale MFAs would provide the necessary indicator values to
assess nutrient criticality not only at the smallholder farm level, but also at the village and landscape
level. Finally, the material flows could be further characterized with respect to gender,
cost/benefits, etc
 
Date 2017-03-01T02:15:20Z
2017-03-01T02:15:20Z
 
Type Internal Report
 
Identifier https://mel.cgiar.org/reporting/download/hash/2CMZWYLs
Grégoire Meylan, Boundia Alexandre Thiombiano, Quang Bao Le. (27/2/2017). Nutrient Flow Scenarios for Sustainable Smallholder Farming Systems in Southwestern Burkina Faso. Amman, Jordan: CRP on Dryland Systems (DS).
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11766/6109
Open access
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-4.0
 
Format PDF
 
Publisher CRP on Dryland Systems (DS)